ORIGINAL: abel_pranger
ORIGINAL: Stickbuilder
I build model aircraft as a hobby and for a diversion. Might I suggest that you try it?
I first tried it more than 50 years ago, and still do it when I need to in order to have a model (type, size, quality, etc.) I can't buy. A few things have changed since building the first ones. For one, I have acquired a host of other interests and the means to pursue them, and managed to develop other skills since then that give me satisfaction to employ with a sense of competence and pride. Secondly ARFs are no longer (generally) the rubber ducky junk such as Lanier sold in the 60's and 70's. The most recent ARF I purchased is an example in point, an E3D designed by Gary Wright, and built in China. I could have bought the kit for about 50 bucks from Gary (until a few months ago when he got out of the business) and spent on the order of 40 hours building it, pieced together from minutes here and hours there spread out over a month or two, under the best of circumstances. I would have saved about 100 bucks, so my time in building it would have been worth $2.50/hr, about 2% of my burdened billing rate before I (semi) retired. Not looking good from an economic standpoint. Well, there's the pride of accomplishment to consider. Not much in the way skill required, but there is always the craftsmanship angle - so I look at the ARF and try to make an honest assessment of how it stacks up against what it would be had I built it. I'm a good builder, not in comparison to those that build for Top Gun competition by any stretch, but amongst model builders in general, and I have know quite a few. So could/would my build of this model be better than that of some semi-slave laborer in PRC? Frankly, no. That coolie did an excellent job of building/covering it, so scratch pride of accomplishment from the potential payoff for building it myself.
Glad I bought it as an ARF. Just hope that coolie couldn't fly it as skillfully as I can.
Abel
Abel, if your have to put a dollar value on your hobbies (any of them) then you can't afford them. It's about what you do for fun, and not about how many of them you can do. At least that's the way it is for me. Sure I can go and buy whatever I want. But there is (for me) no pride of ownership in a model that someone else built. There is no rush of self satisfaction that I get with something that I cut every part for and fastened together, and figured out the points of balence, and the amount of control surface throw that would be required, not to mention incidence settings.
If owning a model airplane that someone else built blows your skirt up, then have fun. Please don't try to turn the tables with the old lame, "did you build your house, or your car"? They are not our hobby. If they were, i'm sure that some could and would do it. No, I didn't cast my own engine, or grow my own Balsa tree either, but that is reaching pretty far. Those who can, do. Those who can't or won't let someone else do it for them.
Bill, AMA 4720
WACO Brotherhood #1